#6 Cirkut Outfit. Help!

jimgalli · Apr 1, 2014

I have sort of a rough and tumble #6 that I made up of 2 partial outfits. It's a Century RB Cycle Graphic 5X7. All the pieces have been languishing in my upstairs studio until the other day I decided it's rotation on the project list has come. This one is governor, not fan. Motor runs fine.

The original lens is long gone. Bummer. That means I need to do calcs to figure out gears etc.

The lens I think I'd like to begin with is a Wollensak Tasope 10 1/2". Who can help me with the formula to calculate the gear? The big sun gear has 290 teeth. But I'm not at home and don't have the radius of the big gear.

Gears I have available for it are 33, 35, 43, 51, 99. I've got a ton of 5" Aerial Recon film to use up. Easily accomodated to the 6 outfit. I did measure the circumference of the drum. It is 9 9/16ths inch with 3 wraps of film on it.

She won't be pretty, but she'll run! I would love to have the complete mathematical formula that arrives at the number of teeth gear to use. Len Robertson, are you still out there??

c.d.ewen · Apr 1, 2014

Jim:

I've got the original BASIC program, but can't run it on an iMac if that'll help.

Charley

snapguy · Apr 1, 2014

BASIC

You mean BASIC as in software? Wow that seems more antique than the Kodak 35 (circa 1941) I just bought. I learned how to write programs in BASIC in the early 1980s I guess.
Good luck with the camera. Sounds fabulous.

jimgalli · Apr 1, 2014

c.d.ewen said:
Jim:

I've got the original BASIC program, but can't run it on an iMac if that'll help.

Charley

Charlie, I was able to download the program yesterday but I feel like a teenage girl who can only drive an automatic. The program actually runs in the command prompt window, sort of, but I don't know how to plug in what it's asking for, or where to get the values. Just need someone to help me figure out what it wants and how to do it. Sort of helpless if things don't just run in 'windows' with all the real computer language stuff going on behind the scenes. Jim

vpwphoto · Apr 1, 2014

^^^ fun stuff..
Ultimate camera for this "gear head" (automotive nut) photographer.

jimgalli · Apr 1, 2014

Gaining on it. Starting to understand how the Lang program runs in the Command Prompt area. Garbage numbers so far, (or not, I wouldn't know) but at least they're changing.

c.d.ewen · Apr 1, 2014

Figuring out what "Perpendicular distance from center of small gear to the LENS AXIS" means is the problem. Measuring from the center of the small gear to the film plane is easy enough, but to two decimal place accuracy? I dunno. Seems to me I dug around on the 'net until I found the underlying math.

Have you read (there was a url link here which no longer exists) ?

Charley

jimgalli · Apr 1, 2014

c.d.ewen said:
Figuring out what "Perpendicular distance from center of small gear to the LENS AXIS" means is the problem. Measuring from the center of the small gear to the film plane is easy enough, but to two decimal place accuracy? I dunno. Seems to me I dug around on the 'net until I found the underlying math.

Have you read (there was a url link here which no longer exists) ?

Charley

No perfectionists at our house Charley! If my wife was one, she married me and had to get over it. I'm just 'ball-parkin' for now. Looks like with the gears I have I can start testing 6" #99, 11" #51 14" #43, and best of all, maybe my 450 Nikkor with the 31,33 set.

You'd be proud of me. The shanks were all 2 short and I'm building extensions. Acceptable run-out so far with the 'last word'.

Hmmm, the old brass first gen. Protar VII has 11" and 14" on it. Wonder if that's what this set was built around?? Maybe I'll get lucky yet. I've got that lens, and it would look fantastic on the camera.

Mark Crabtree · Apr 1, 2014

I should have a modified version of the BASIC program set up for a #6 Outfit. I can run it later if you know the exact focal length of the lens. Or I can figure what focal length you lenses will work with.

I would just need to start up an older computer I have it running on when I get back from a class in a few hours.

c.d.ewen · Apr 1, 2014

Jim: You've got a 99 gear? Geez. Just did the calc - 3.156" diameter. The camera's gonna fall off the back of the tripod.

The "last word" on the gears is going to be the squares test.

Charley

jimgalli · Apr 1, 2014

c.d.ewen said:
Jim: You've got a 99 gear? Geez. Just did the calc - 3.156" diameter. The camera's gonna fall off the back of the tripod.

The "last word" on the gears is going to be the squares test.

Charley

Dangit. I think my 99 is a 66 That actually makes sense because a convertible that had an 11 and a 14 would also have a 7 inch, not a 6.

jimgalli · Apr 1, 2014

Mark Crabtree said:
I should have a modified version of the BASIC program set up for a #6 Outfit. I can run it later if you know the exact focal length of the lens. Or I can figure what focal length you lenses will work with.

I would just need to start up an older computer I have it running on when I get back from a class in a few hours.

Thanks very much Mark, but I think I've got it figured out. Sort of.

jamie young · Apr 1, 2014

If the shanks were too short then the gears were probably for another size or model cirkut. I'm unusually busy right now but will try to send the charts that I have soon. A 99 gear is unusual for a 6 outfit. only cirkut I 've heard of with a 99 is a 16. The outfit back on the old fan cameras had a different position than the governor models. That might be why some of the gears are off as well.
What are you doing for film?

jimgalli · Apr 1, 2014

Thanks Jamie. I appreciate the time.

The 99 gear turned out to be a 66 :embarrassed:

For film I have a freezer full of 5" Aerial Recon film. Panatomic and Plus X. So the 6 will be a 5 in use. I'll just wind it on the spool in the dark and tape the film right on the drum. Emulsion out. I use the aerial recon film in my 10 also. I'm envisioning 30" and less for the 6. Easy to process etc. Getting lazy in my old age.

Mark Crabtree · Apr 2, 2014

jimgalli said:
Thanks very much Mark, but I think I've got it figured out. Sort of.

Let me know if you do need any of the dimensions for #6 Outfit for the program; I should have them from mine.

jimgalli · Apr 2, 2014

Mark Crabtree said:
Let me know if you do need any of the dimensions for #6 Outfit for the program; I should have them from mine.

Yes Please! And how you got them if possible. The more I understand, the better. For now, the default in the program was an 8 outfit which I think was pretty similar. I'm getting back numbers that seem consistent with a Bausch and Lomb Protar VII early version which was 11" and 14" and 7". I may be lucky. Those will be the first lenses I'll try.

Jim

jamie young · Apr 2, 2014

Mark - are you still doing much with cirkut cameras? I've been wondering who is out there still working with them

Mark Crabtree · Apr 2, 2014

Not doing near as much anymore. We still shoot a few jobs. Doug Chadwick is still shooting jobs with Cirkut, but moving quickly toward digital for that.

I don't know if you ever spoke to Gordon Roth in NJ. He is an old Cirkut shooter who is fascinating to talk to. Worked with Harold Lewis (MA) a lot. Built an optical bench to measure focal length for Cirkuts, and machined his own gears. I spoke to him for over an hour and a half today. He's not shooting any more, but was still experimenting and testing stuff last year. I did some gear calculations for him. We almost got him to shoot a job a year or two ago. Gordon worked in the studio at Kodak back in the 50's, and worked in O. Winston Link's studio for a while too, though for someone else who shared the studio with Link. He has a #16 he'd like to sell.

I don't know how much Ron Klein is shooting Cirkut, but always has some interesting project up his sleeve. Often still film, or wet plate.

I keep my #10's working. I think about selling my nice #6 Camera (not Outfit), though that seems like the most sensible Cirkut to shoot for fun.

Mark Crabtree · Apr 2, 2014

From the gear program as I ran it for my governor #6 Outfit:

G1=4.5 'LARGE GEAR RADIUS'
g4 = 32 'GEAR PITCH'
D3=3.05 'FILM DRUM DIAMETER
K1=2.224 'DISTANCE SM GEAR TO LENS AXIS'
Y1=1.81 'DISTANCE FROM SM GEAR TO FILM PLANE'
w2 = 0.307 'SLIT WIDTH'

Bob Lang gave me numbers back in 2001 that someone else had measured on a fan #6 Outfit:
Large gear radius 4.5"
Diameter of film drum 3.0239"
Perpendicular distance from center of small gear to lens axis .685"
Perpendicular distance from center of small gear to film plane 2.168"
Slit Width .3125"
Gear Pitch 32

Many of these numbers have more decimal places than necessary, or realistically accurate, but that's what I have. Perhaps some are an artifact of conversion from metric.

It appears that I do have the program running on my current computer. Mine is a modified version of Bob Lang's.

jimgalli · Apr 6, 2014

Progress report;

I got the Bob Lang, Clayton Tume, Bruce Christie gear program running and figured out how to use it. Took the measurements and filled in the blanks and ran dozens of scenarios to match the 5 gears I was blessed with to possible lenses.

I ended up with some possibilities and went on a trial run today.

All of my gears were on shafts 3/8" too short, so I machined new shafts. Thanks to Ron Klein for sharing his knowledge about the gears and other things. I wouldn't have guessed that the gears are just soft soldered on and come right out in a punch press. With longer shafts made I just had to solder them up again.

Today I chose an 8 3/4" Wollensak Series 1A lens because the gear program seemed to indicate it would work well with my 51 tooth gear. I checked film plane to ground glass distance and they seemed identical. So I used the 'outfit' 5X7 back for focus and then changed to the Cirkut back

The machine ran flawlessly. Really a sweet runner and the exposures are pretty good.

For the sake of speed and ease in this testing mode, I chopped the 38" neg up into 12" sections and developed the sections in the 3004 tank on the JOBO. But I don't have anything to show off because the curl in those 5X12 sections is so nasty it's just about impossible to scan them! Plus my image sucked, but hey, I'll get better as I go.

Sharpness is a concern. That particular lens is tack sharp in normal use on 4X5. It's a stunner, but on the Cirkut, not so much. Squareness looks good. Things are neither stretched or compressed. I focused for infinity because that's where it should be for a 51 tooth gear. Then I hoped for nearer things to be in focus because of lens being stopped down to f45. But the farther things are away, the less sharp they are, and near things that I wouldn't expect to be as sharp are sharper.

The image slit concerns me. .344 seems awful wide. 11/32nd inch wide slit.

partial image done today

100 percent crop to see sharpness

jimgalli · Apr 6, 2014

Another grab. This time a 35mm sized grab that should show infinity focus. Proportions look great.

scanned at 720dpi and saved as 720X1080.

sharpness. This lens is very sharp.

jimgalli · Apr 6, 2014

A couple more grabs from yesterday's neg. Baxter Sheriff was left over from a movie set. This is Goldfield, NV.

and a 100% crop. Need to understand how to make this crisp.

I understand that the lens is smearing because it's in the wrong position for the image and the speed to come to a perfect merge, I just don't know how to fix it.

Here are the numbers from the Gears.exe program for this lens.

Kia Ora Cirkut Gears - Fri Apr 04 23:20:23 2014

v2.0 10 November 2000
Original BASIC program by Bob Lang / Al Rosenbaum
Translated to C++ by Bruce Christie <xtie@xtra.co.nz>

Subject distance measured from: film plane
Actual focal length of lens: 8.75 inches
Large gear radius: 4.5 inches
Diameter of film drum: 3.04 inches
Center of small gear to lens axis: 2.17 inches
Center of small gear to film plane: 1.69 inches
Slit width: 0.344 inches
Gear pitch: 32

GEAR # SUBJECT LENS PIVOT TO f/ IMAGE
DISTANCE EXTENSION SUBJECT MULTI- MAGNIF-
(FEET) (INCHES) DISTANCE PLIER ICATION
(INCHES)

51 -62.054 -0.100 -747.798 0.99 -0.01
50 1228.422 0.005 14737.932 1.00 0.00
49 58.018 0.113 693.108 1.01 0.01

panoramic · Apr 7, 2014

Another thought about sharpness issues

Jim,

since you mentioned that your #6 is a composite of several cameras, have you checked the film plane in the magazine to see if it matches the ground glass focus? I have worked on cirkut cameras that were off by over 1/8 inch.

Mostly this is a problem with number 10 cameras since the rear bellows is separate from the camera body and can be shimmed to match the film plane.

It might be a bear if the #6 is out of wack that way as you are putting the magazine flush to the back of the camera and twisting it in to place. I have two #8's that were modified by a previous owner so they clip on like a number 10 so the distance could be adjusted but it did change the originality of the machine.

Ron Klein

jimgalli · Apr 8, 2014

panoramic said:
Jim,

since you mentioned that your #6 is a composite of several cameras, have you checked the film plane in the magazine to see if it matches the ground glass focus? I have worked on cirkut cameras that were off by over 1/8 inch.

Mostly this is a problem with number 10 cameras since the rear bellows is separate from the camera body and can be shimmed to match the film plane.

It might be a bear if the #6 is out of wack that way as you are putting the magazine flush to the back of the camera and twisting it in to place. I have two #8's that were modified by a previous owner so they clip on like a number 10 so the distance could be adjusted but it did change the originality of the machine.

Ron Klein

Thanks Ron.

Yes, I did check that and it seemed OK. Yesterday I made a series of 6 7" images of some houses up the hill behind me. A good infinity situation. I taped a rule on the bed and changed focus each time by 1 mm. 3mm back from where I had a good visual infinity was the best, but that was on the far edge of the test, so maybe I need to do it over and go even further.

Tonight I made a 42" 280 degree image up in town and the film was fogged.

Safe to say I'm not having much fun with this so far. Need a win.

#6 Cirkut Outfit. Help!

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